English history

“ When the intelligence reached England, that the nation whose tongue was classic, whose statuary was regarded with despairing wonder, whose records formed one of the finest pages of history, was, after centuries of subjugation, striving to obtain freedom, a genuine enthusiasm pervaded English society. ”

“ I declare to you that the reading of history makes my blood boil: century after century tells the same story, in sickening monotony illustrious name follows illustrious name on the slavish page, saint and hero, king and poet and knight, in an endless repetition, till one is forced to cry out in indignant remonstrance, to ask the historian whether he has forgotten that the English People ever existed. ”

“ The period occupied by what we speak of as English history is that, speaking broadly, during which the great mediæval systems—feudalism and the Church—have by degrees given place to modern society, of which the moving-springs are freedom of the individual, government in accordance with the popular will, and freedom of thought. The object of a History of England is therefore to trace that change as it worked itself out amid all the various influences which affected it in our own nation. ”

“ The growing consciousness in the people at large of a new greatness, its instinctive prevision of the coming of a time when England was to play a foremost part in the history of the world, the upgrowth of a nobler and loftier temper which should correspond to such a destiny, all were alike unintelligible to him. ”

“ Indeed, were the main truths of English history taught in our schools and universities to-day, were educated men familiar with the determining and major facts of the national past, such follies could never have taken root. ”

“ If there be a people which has been busy making history on the great scale for the last three hundred years—and the most profoundly interesting history—history which, if it happened to be that of Greece or Rome, we should study with avidity—it is the English. If there be a people which, during the same period, has developed a remarkable literature, it is our own. ”

“ All the great events of English history find complete correspondent delineation in English literature, so that, were the purely historical record lost, we should have in the works of poetry, fiction, and the drama, correct portraitures of the character, habits, manners and customs, political sentiments, and modes and forms of religious belief among the English people ”

“ I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history, if I can succeed in placing before the English of the nineteenth century a true picture of the life of their ancestors. ”

“ The object of this series of Historical Biographies is to try and select from English History a few men whose lives were lived in stirring times. The intention is to treat their lives and times in some little detail, and to group round them the most distinctive features of the periods before and after those in which they lived. ”

“ But there is still wanting a full, throughough, and domestic, social account of our English ancestors, that is, a history which shall trace the progress of social life in the intercourse of man with man; the advance of arts, the various changes in the habits and occupations of individuals ”

“ It seems to me, therefore, that the study, say of English history, where we have a continuous growth over many centuries, where the disturbing influences of individuals or chance are in a greater degree cancelled by the general tendencies working beneath them, we have really a far more instructive field for political observation. ”

“ But the story is valuable because it is not only the history of a single soul, but the history of thousands of thoughtful English folk in those days between 1840 and 1870, when the discoveries of science and criticism, and the new developments of democratic ideas, changed all the habits of men's thinking, shook the old fabrics to their foundations, and did not, as yet, build new temples. ”

“ The stress is laid upon the development of the English government, which is the most important feature to be emphasized in the study of English history. The connection between English institutions and those of New England is brought out in one of the problems. ”

“ In this rapid development of art, literature, science, and discovery, the English had hitherto taken but little part. But they were ready to reap what other men had sown. Unfatigued by the labours of the pioneer, unsophisticated by the pedantries and sophistries of the schools, in the freshness of their youth and vigour, they surveyed the world unfolded to them. ”

“ Many notable works have been written on various periods of our history; some of them at such length as to appeal almost exclusively to professed historical students. It is believed that the time has come when the advance which has been made in the knowledge of English history as a whole should be laid before the public in a single work of fairly adequate size. ”

“ When we duly realize this, and further come to see how the two great branches of the English race have the common mission of establishing throughout the larger part of the earth a higher civilization and more permanent political order than any that has gone before, we shall the better understand the true significance of the history which English-speaking men have so magnificently wrought out upon American soil. ”

“ The advantage would be the enlargement of the mind by the contemplation of the majestic march of human events and the preparation for any future course of historical study. 'Boys come to us,' said a German professor once to me, 'knowing their centuries.' How few English boys or even English men have any notion of their centuries! The dark ages are indeed dark to them. ”

“ One may easily challenge such a definition, which, like most others, is far from faultless. It is difficult, for example, to draw the line sharply between instructive and pleasure-giving works; for many an instructive book of history gives us pleasure, and there may be more instruction on important matters in a pleasurable poem than in a treatise on ethics. Again, there are historians who allege that English literature must include not simply the works of Britain but everything written in the English language. ”

“ They are extremely instructive for the internal relations of English society. They show wide observation and calm wisdom, and, like his philosophical works, are a treasure for the English nation, whose views of life have been built upon them. ”

“ Into the New World the Englishmen carried all that was dear to them at home, and the traditions of English endurance, of courage, perseverance, and dogged resolution carried thence have been large factors in the moulding of the American nation. ”

“ The object of universal history is to place before our eyes the leading changes, and the conflicts of nations, together with their causes and results. Our purpose is to depict the history of one of the chief of the Western nations, the English, and that too in an age which decisively modified both its inner constitution and its outward position in the world, but it cannot be understood unless we first pourtray, with a few quick touches, the historical events under the influence of which it became civilised and great. ”

“ The respectable author, whose opinion of the state of British literature in the fifteenth century has been quoted above, ascribes the neglect of learning which disgraces this portion of our history to the following causes.—The wars in which the English had been so long engaged against France—The schism of the west—The little encouragement afforded to learned men—and the scarcity of books. ”

“ The eighteenth century wrought a vast transformation in England, though, owing to the lack of startling events on English soil, the casual reader of English social history too often thinks of the eighteenth century as a time of stagnation. ”

“ Premising this, we may go on to consider some aspects of the work which the English race has done and is doing in the world, and we need not feel discouraged if, in order to do justice to the subject, we have to take our start far back in ancient history. We shall begin, it may be said, somewhere near the primeval chaos, and though we shall indeed stop short of the day of judgment, we shall hope at all events to reach the millennium. ”

“ Thus literature and philology, represented in the elementary school by English alone, in the university will extend over the ancient and modern languages. History, which, like charity, best begins at home, but, like charity, should not end there, will ramify into anthropology, archæology, political history, and geography, with the history of the growth of the human mind and of its products in the shape of philosophy, science, and art. ”

“ Every one of the chief English poets and their poems, the history of every European country, the lives of great reformers, statesmen, generals, inventors, discoverers, men of science, musicians, ancient philosophers and modern philanthropists, negro slavery, taxation, national debt, the age of chivalry, the Middle Ages, wrongs of Poland, the Gypsies, ancient Egypt, astronomy, geology, natural history, the vegetable kingdom—these and scores of other topics were treated during these years of lecturing life in London and the provinces. ”

“ But what is history? An echo of the past in the future; a reflex from the future on the past. ”

“ One of the best known, and one of the least intelligible, facts of literary history is the lateness, in Western European Literature at any rate, of prose fiction, and the comparative absence, in the two great classical languages, of what we call by that name. ”

“ To me, and, as I trust, to the great majority of those whom I address, the great attempt to educate the people of England which has just been set afoot, is one of the most satisfactory and hopeful events in our modern history. ”

“ Who can doubt that between the English and the French, between the Scotch and the Irish, there are differences of character which have profoundly affected and still affect the course of history? ”

“ In these two works the attempt of the writers has been to write the history of a people—not merely of a government, and they will remain, for this reason, most valuable contributions to the permanent literature of England. ”

“ If a man, such as we are supposing, should write the history of England, he would assuredly not omit the battles, the sieges, the negotiations, the seditions, the ministerial changes. But with these he would intersperse the details which are the charm of historical romances. ”

“ We may have the military, the political, the social, the industrial, the economic, or the religious history of England, for instance, and although these histories will overlap and involve one another, each of them will exhibit a career which is peculiar and distinct from its fellows. ”

“ In the story form the current of each national life is distinctly indicated, and its picturesque and noteworthy periods and episodes are presented for the reader in their philosophical relation to each other as well as to universal history. ”

“ PREFACE The object of this work is to set forth with as much clearness as possible the more important facts in the history of England in the nineteenth century. We have chosen to do this through the medium of biography, in the belief that the lives of a few representative men would present better opportunities for interesting and effective treatment than an historical narrative, which must have been encumbered by a mass of detail not capable of effective disposition within the limited space at our command. ”

“ For in our literature, which is but our voice as a people, the mind speaks, that has so laboured as to win for England, almost alone among the nations, the inheritance of an inalienable freedom.”—English Writers from Chaucer to Dunbar. ”

“ What is true of history is true of nearly all the rest, and the upshot of the whole matter is that there is not, either in private patronage or in popular demand, a chance for history in modern England. ”

“ Modern History is the history of ourselves, of the way in which we came to be what we are, of the education of our nation, of the development of our government, of the fortunes of our fathers, that caused us to be taught and governed and placed as we are, and formed our minds and habits by that teaching, government, and position ”

“ True history records processes, the relation of cause and effect, the formative influences and their result in national life. The true history of England shows not annals of kings and achievements of warriors, but the development of a mighty people. ”

“ But history is not only philosophy, teaching by example; its true purpose is, also, to illustrate the general progress of society in knowledge and the arts, and the changes of manners and pursuits of men.
There is an imperfection, both in ancient and modern histories, and those of the best masters, in this respect. While they recite public transactions, they omit, to a great degree, what belongs to the civil, social, and domestic progress of men and nations. ”

“ And, inasmuch as, in England, civilization has followed a course more orderly, and less disturbed, than in any other country, it becomes the more necessary, in writing its history, to use some resources like those which I have suggested. ”

“ He becomes part of England of the past and of the future—part of the spiritual heritage for which Englishmen have in the past shown themselves willing to die part of the English ideal, towards which the best of Englishmen aim to live. ”

“ You have been told that the fifteenth century was a dull time in English literature, but that it was also a time of new action and new life, for the discovery of new worlds and the discovery of printing had opened men's eyes and minds to new wonders. There was a third event which added to this new life by bringing new thought and new learning to England. ”